As part of this new series for basic troubleshooting, in this post I discuss the first steps you can take when researching an error. The steps will help you narrow down the nature and root cause of the problem, and get you closer to resolution.
A recap...

You are debugging an error in production. You've enabled traces which created 1GB worth of log files. Is it time to cancel your vacation and start reading? Not necessarily. In this post I describe the technique I use to extract the erroring requests from...

As part of the "Troubleshooting 101" series, in this post, I discuss the use of tracing for the Commerce and Search servers.
Enabling trace
Trace for the WebSphere servers is enabled in the WebSphere Administrative Console. It can be...

Introduction
To identify a performance problem is a challenge when requests on WC store front become slow. There are several possible places that can be the source of the problem. It may happen on the web server, WebSphere application server or on...

Using RESTful API calls during page rendering is becoming the norm in store front development. It enables developers to isolate the front end from the multitude of backend systems that might provide information.
As a result of that separation,...

Due to its personalized and dynamic nature, marketing data has always been tricky to cache and invalidate. In this post I discuss the invalidation techniques that are available on each Fix Pack and Feature Pack levels.
The marketing caches
For...

Caching data is one of the best tool used in WebSphere Commerce to provide great performance. By leveraging a request result that was already computed, the system is able to save a lot of time and CPU. However, caching strategies can be difficult to implement...

When dealing with an outage, there is nothing more frustrating than finding that key MustGather data such as Javacores was not collected, making it impossible to diagnose the outage's root cause without a new occurrence. With the release of...

If you administer a WebSphere Commerce site, you probably have seen OptimisticUpdateFailureException errors in the logs. In this post, I discuss the concept of Optimistic Locking and how to resolve an OptimisticUpdateFailureException .
Optimistic...

In my previous article , I showed how you could use the lightweight performance measurement tool (PMT) to find slow requests. Now, that you found them, you probably want to know what could be done to improve things.
In this article,...

In a WebSphere Commerce Fix Pack there are always improvements and enhancements. In this post I bring attention to a few included in Fix Pack 9 and earlier, that you might have overlooked.
While helping clients plan their Fix Pack upgrade, I prepared a...

When a request on a site is slow, finding the source of the problem can be challenging. On one hand, we can monitor the speed of the overall request. This tells us which request is slow, but not much else. On the other hand, enabling trace logs or using java...

Everyone’s favorite but most critical question when it comes to troubleshooting any kind of issues is “ What Changed ”. This is especially true for a site outage type of problem. It is important to know what could cause a...

While troubleshooting an outage, you can often hear comments such as " The site went down because IHS hit MaxClients ," or " The problem was that the number of database connections increased ." In a complex multi-tier...

In time of crisis, with a production site down, starting a 'bridge call' can be an automatic, and nearly immediate step. But be warned - while bridge calls certainly be effective under the right circumstances, they can also end up being...

Compressed References for 64 bit java has allowed us to take advantage of the increase heap space while maintaining high throughput and smaller memory consumption. However, it can also introduce potential memory problems, primarily native memory...

OutOfMemory errors aren't a simple topic. Learning to resolve them requires understanding of multiple Java concepts and experience. In this post, I highlight a few posts and other links to help you get started. I also encourage you to search this blogging...

This post helps you get started with diagnosing an Out of Memory issue once you have confirmed via Is this Out of Memory . Out of Memory errors happen in different flavors so you will need to start by recognizing the kind that you are...

Dynamic Caching is a must-have feature for performance. In this post I focus on one key aspect: Sizing the different cache instances.
When a cache instance is full, Dynacache needs to evict or off-load entries before it can add a new cache entry. A high...

One of the advantages to using native cores for memory analysis is that with the Memory Analyzer tool you can list threads and the memory they are using. In this post I show how to find details for the request associated to each WebContainer thread....

OutOfMemory errors present themselves with different symptoms, the most common one being slowness and high CPU. Troubleshooting typical high CPU problems and OutOfMemory problems are essentially different processes. Learning to recognize one from the...

OutOfMemoryError troubleshooting requires review of multiple files; each files adds a different clue to the puzzle. In this post, I share how to get organized and collect the right files, which is sure to save you troubleshooting time!
From the Must Gath...

Out-of-the-box, If a promotion code is entered and the purchase condition of the promotion that’s associated to the entered promotion code is satisfied, then in the shopping cart the shopper would see the promotion code applicable.
In some cases a...

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